A novella about love, exile, and how violent the passage of time can be.

Nina Berberova begins in wartime Paris, where Olga and Einar part with declarations of loyalty. Seven years later they meet again and discover that memory has preserved something life has not: Einar is married, and whatever survives between them now exists under different conditions. 

Berberova was one of the great chroniclers of Russian émigré life, and The Revolt carries her characteristic interest in displacement, private loyalties and people suspended between historical events and their own stubborn inner narratives. The war matters, but obliquely. Around, Paris is occupied, books vanish, people die, borders shift, while intimate life continues in rooms, meals, letters and remembered promises. 

Originally written in Russian and translated here by Marian Schwartz.

Edition / condition: Flamingo / Fontana Paperbacks, London, 1990. First Flamingo edition; first published in English by Collins in 1989. Paperback. Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz. Light rubbing and shelf wear to covers and edges, with mild page toning; internally clean and binding sound. Very good condition.